Armageddon
by mchairporn
Summary: Post-Fire drabble. 900 words of angsty Emily I had feels


**Why did I write this**

When I was 16 I shared a room with my twin sister, Katie. Looking at our room you could instantly tell where she ended and I began, split down the middle the left side of the room was hers and the right mine. Being two 16 year old girls sharing one room, there's only so many ways you can express you individuality without killing each other over who's taking up more room because 'that bitch' got a double bed.

So, posters.

It was just another thing that kept us so different. Her wall was covered in posters in all these fucking topless men all sweaty and _"Grrr." _And all I had was a couple magazine cut outs of Cindy Crawford and _Kerrang! _front women hotties.

I guess that's when she started to click on about my sexuality.

But whatever. The point is, have you ever had your walls covered in so many posters for so long, that when you move even one _slightly _to the left, your whole fucking room looks alien? It's like "Whoa, what the fuck?"

This is _not _like that.

Naomi is gone and the room is not alien. Nothing's changed, the world didn't stop. There wasn't an insidious clap of thunder and Yellowstone National Park didn't blow up. I didn't even really hear her last breath, but she died. She's dead. And nothing has changed.

You'd think that the world would change when someone so important leaves it, wouldn't you? Surely everyone could feel this aching loss that I feel. It's like I'm fucking empty, just so fucking done.

I mean really! The last four fucking years have been great. Don't get me wrong the long distance relationship between London and New York has been trialing, and it's been long, and tedious, and sleeping in a single bed after sharing a double with her for so long was so isolating and cold that every day I just felt like giving it all up and going home. But the skype calls kept me going, and the impromptu trips across the Atlantic - that put me so deep in my overdraft I felt it burn – made the distance and homesickness hurt a little less.

Then the video calls came a little less, left unanswered half the time. When we did talk it was over the phone and she just sounded so tired. And not the normal Naomi tired, the tired that said "I swear to God if I don't get into that bed soonish I'm gonna smack a nun with this Navy rum bottle" that she almost always sported through collage, it was an emotionally tired. Achy, drowsy, done.

Achy. Drowsy. Done.

She was so done, and neither of us had a clue.

Effy keeps saying they thought she was going to be fine. _Fine. _Naomi had ovarian cancer and she was using the words _fine._

I can't help but wonder what tone of voice she had when she said the words _fine. _Did she actually say that, or is Effy paraphrasing? Was Naomi doing that thing where she was waiting for everything to resolve itself, like she did in collage? Because let's face it, collage was anything but _fine, _and after a year of her waiting for things to sort themselves out she had to pull her head out of her ass and make things happen. So she still didn't learn.

And what if she said fine like "Oh yeah I'm gonna be _fine." _And in her head she's planning her own funeral and her will, because she's too fucking stubborn to realize that this is a serious fucking illness and she should have _fucking called me._

Instead Effy called me. When she was hospitalized. Dying.

Do you know what that was like? Have you ever had that phone call? The difference between someone saying "Emily, your phone's ringing," and "Emily, she's sick." The world may not have stopped when she died, but it sure fucking stopped when I got that call.

I mean, I didn't even know how long I had to pack for. How awful is that? I didn't know whether to pack for a few days or a few weeks. Either way it didn't matter, because I only packed 3 changes of clothes and 4 changes of underwear, which I didn't even use because I never left her side. Well, I never left her side once I got in there.

And even then, it took me so fucking long to pluck up the courage to even get through the door. The thought of being near her, sharing a bed with her… That genuinely terrified me. It'd make it too real. I didn't want to go in there and see her so frail and weak. The total opposite of what I've always known my Naomi to be. I wanted to be strong for her, too, I did, but I also knew that it would be so difficult to not go in there and burst into tears.

She was dying god fucking damnit. How was I meant to go in there and 'be strong'? I couldn't. I can't. I can't believe I did.

A bit.

This is so fucking shitty. And like that thing I said earlier about the posters – I'm clearing out her stuff from her and Effy's flat. Effy's flat.

It's not like I'm expecting her to walk out of the bathroom in a towel, I'm not waiting on her to bring me a cup of tea, I'm not stepping on memories or breathing in what she was. This is where we all lived _together _and nothing feels different. It's all so achingly familiar but it's like she never even existed.

But I swear to God if I forget everything about her, the one thing I won't is how blue her eyes were right at the very end.


End file.
